Another year, another strange motorcycle! Not my own design this time, but one I have wanted to build for some time.
NM Studio offers two free models, but also shows photographs of several more, mostly small buildings and vehicles. I have been particular interested in one of them - a rather extraordinary Czech motorbike from the 1920s. I hoped that more of these models would be made available on the web site, but this has not come to pass. However, I recently discovered that most if not all of the models have been published in ABC Magazine over the last seven or eight years, and I have now obtained the relevant issue, together with a number of other models taken from various issues of the magazine.
For those few who do not already know, ABC is a fortnightly magazine published in the Czech Republic (and formerly Czechoslovakia). It is aimed at young people, and each issue contains a number of short articles on broadly scientific and technological subjects. There are usually also two or three paper models of varying complexity, a large number of which have been contributed by Richard Vyškovskı since the magazine was first published in the 1950s. This model is not by Vyškovskı, however, but by Milan Novobilskı.
The prototype was built by Albin Liebisch in Krasna Lipa in Bohemia between 1925 and 1939, and was intended for family touring. It is particularly notable for its enormous length. The model is of a three-seater (in tandem) which was 3.5 metres long, and there was even a four-seater version and a sidecar could be added for yet more passengers. It was powered by a single-cylinder 600cc engine, and was claimed to be able to reach 95 km/hr (60mph), though I wonder how realistic that was.
Incidentally, the name "Čechie-Böhmerland" is simply the names for Bohemia in coloquial Czech and in German.
The model as published in 2005 occupies four pages of the magazine - three-and-a-bit pages of parts plus a photo of the completed model and a description of the prototype.
